Title: Windows: VS Code crashes on startup with “GPU process isn't usable,” including GPU-disabled and clean-profile launches

VS Code previously worked, but recently began crashing on launch. The available logs show startup failures on September 3 and September 9, 2026.

The latest working-session logs identify VS Code 1.136.2. Crash dumps show Electron 42.8.1 and 42.10.0 terminating with exception  0x80000003  and:
 gpu_data_manager_impl_private.cc:418: GPU process isn't usable. Goodbye. 

Launches with extensions disabled, hardware acceleration disabled, and a separate user-data directory were attempted; all were reported to crash.

Expected: VS Code opens normally.
Actual: VS Code exits during startup.